A decision-making paradox that shows people's preferences can violate the expected utility theory, highlighting irrational behavior. Important for understanding inconsistencies in user decision-making and designing better user experiences.
Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely (EAST) is a behavioral insights framework used to influence behavior. Important for designing interventions and user experiences that effectively change behavior.
A qualitative research method involving direct conversations with users to gather insights into their needs, behaviors, and experiences. Essential for gaining deep insights into user perspectives and informing design decisions.
The practice of ensuring that all brand activities and communications are consistent with the brand's values, mission, and identity. Essential for maintaining a cohesive brand image and fostering trust and loyalty among customers.
The underlying goal or motivation behind a user's search query, crucial for understanding and optimizing content to meet user needs and improve SEO. Essential for creating content that aligns with user needs and improving search engine rankings.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers, gathers information, and routes calls to the appropriate recipient. It improves customer service and automates information retrieval.
A deployment strategy that reduces downtime and risk by running two identical production environments, switching traffic between them. Crucial for ensuring seamless updates and minimizing disruptions in digital product deployment.
A research technique that explores the context in which users interact with a product, service, or environment to understand their needs and behaviors. Crucial for gaining deep insights into user contexts and designing more relevant solutions.
The study of the nature of beauty, art, and taste and the creation and appreciation of beauty. Essential for creating visually appealing and engaging user interfaces.
A development environment where software is created and modified. Crucial for allowing developers to build and experiment with new features.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. Essential for validating product ideas quickly and cost-effectively, allowing teams to learn about customer needs without fully developing the product.
The planning, development, and management of content to meet business and user needs, ensuring consistency and effectiveness across all channels. Essential for creating cohesive and impactful content that aligns with business goals and user needs.
Decision-making strategies that use simple heuristics to make quick, efficient, and satisfactory choices with limited information. Important for designing user experiences that support quick and efficient decision-making.
The dynamic system of content creation, distribution, and interaction within an environment. Important for understanding how content flows and interacts within a system.
A principle stating that a system should be liberal in what it accepts and conservative in what it sends, meaning it should handle user input flexibly while providing clear, consistent output, similar to the principle of fault tolerance. Essential for designing robust and user-friendly interfaces that accommodate a wide range of user inputs and behaviors while maintaining reliability and clarity in responses.
A method of testing two identical versions of a webpage or app to ensure the accuracy of the testing tool. Important for validating the effectiveness of A/B testing tools and processes.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is the final phase of the software testing process where actual users test the software to ensure it meets their requirements. Crucial for validating that the software functions correctly in real-world scenarios before its release.
The drive to perform an activity due to external rewards or pressures rather than for the inherent enjoyment of the activity itself. Important for designing systems that effectively use external incentives to motivate user behavior.
A dark pattern where questions are worded in a way that tricks the user into giving an answer they didn't intend. Recognizing the harm of this practice is important to maintain clarity and honesty in user interactions.
A dark pattern where the cancellation process is intentionally complicated to discourage users from canceling. Designers must avoid complicating cancellations and respect user decisions with a straightforward process.
A usability test to see what impression users get within the first 10 seconds of interacting with a product or page. Important for designers to quickly gauge initial user impressions and improve immediate engagement.
Practical applications of behavioral science to understand and influence human behavior in various contexts. Crucial for applying scientific insights to design and improve user experiences and outcomes.
The process of creating or enhancing a community among individuals with common interests, goals, or values. Crucial for fostering user engagement and loyalty through shared interests and values.
The structural design of information environments, organizing and labeling content to support usability and findability. Essential for creating intuitive and navigable digital products.
A theory that emphasizes the role of emotions in risk perception and decision-making, where feelings about risk often diverge from cognitive assessments. Important for designing systems that account for emotional responses to risk and improve decision-making.
The process of making small, continuous improvements to products, services, or processes over time. Important for sustaining growth and maintaining competitiveness through ongoing improvements.
Digital advertising that includes advanced features like video, audio, or interactive elements to engage users. Important for creating engaging and effective online advertisements.
A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. Crucial for understanding how people make decisions and the biases that influence their choices.
A fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way, guiding design decisions. Essential for user-centered design, ensuring that products meet the needs of target users.
The process of creating a simplified visual guide or blueprint for the layout and structure of a webpage or app, focusing on functionality and content placement. Crucial for planning and communicating design structure before full development.
A cognitive approach that involves meaningful analysis of information, leading to better understanding and retention. Crucial for designing educational and informational content that promotes deep engagement and learning.
The phenomenon where taking a test on material improves long-term retention of that material more than additional study sessions. Crucial for designing educational tools and methods that enhance learning and retention.
A collection of design patterns that provides solutions to common design problems. Useful for standardizing design solutions and promoting best practices across projects.
An activity during a design audit where printed screens representing customer journeys are reviewed collaboratively with stakeholders to assess design quality and identify areas for improvement. Essential for ensuring design consistency, gathering feedback, and making informed decisions on design enhancements.
A principle that suggests people are more likely to comply with requests or follow suggestions from authority figures. Important for designing persuasive experiences and understanding user compliance.
A meeting held at the end of a project or development cycle, also known as a "post-mortem," to review what went well, what didn't, and how processes can be improved in the future. Crucial for continuous improvement and learning from past experiences to enhance future projects.
Computer programs designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the internet. Crucial for automating customer service and enhancing user engagement.
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is a program developed by W3C to improve web accessibility. Essential for creating guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities.
Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for designing networked applications based on stateless, client-server communication. Essential for building scalable and efficient web services.
A medium through which a product or service is delivered to a customer, including physical and digital channels. Crucial for understanding how products and services reach end users.
The combined efforts of humans and AI systems to achieve better outcomes than either could alone. Important for leveraging the strengths of both humans and AI in various tasks.
A visual exercise that helps product teams understand and prioritize features by organizing user stories into a cohesive narrative that aligns with user journeys and goals. Essential for planning and prioritizing product features and ensuring alignment with user needs.
Lifetime Value (LTV) is a metric that estimates the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account throughout their relationship. Crucial for informing customer acquisition strategies, retention efforts, and overall business planning by providing insights into long-term customer profitability.
A cognitive bias where people judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions). Important for understanding user decision-making and designing systems that mitigate this bias.
Large Language Model (LLM) is an advanced artificial intelligence system trained on vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like text. Essential for natural language processing tasks, content generation, and enhancing human-computer interactions across various applications in product design and development.
The perceived heaviness or importance of an element in a design, influenced by factors such as size, color, and contrast. Crucial for creating balanced and visually appealing designs.
A design principle that suggests interfaces should minimize the need for users to recall information from memory, instead providing cues to aid recognition. Essential for creating user-friendly interfaces that reduce cognitive load and improve usability.
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is a set of attributes that enhance the accessibility of web content for people with disabilities. Essential for making web applications more usable and inclusive.
The preferred version of a web page that search engines should index, used to avoid duplicate content issues and improve SEO. Essential for managing SEO and ensuring the correct indexing of web pages.
The act of designing and implementing subtle interventions to influence behavior in a predictable way. Crucial for guiding user behavior effectively without limiting freedom of choice.
The ease with which visual information can be processed and understood by the viewer. Important for creating intuitive and accessible interfaces.
An environment closer to production where final testing and validation occur. Crucial for ensuring that products are ready for production deployment.
The mathematical study of waiting lines or queues. Useful for optimizing user flow and reducing wait times in user interfaces.
A psychological phenomenon where people follow the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. Essential for designing interfaces and experiences that leverage social influence to guide user behavior and increase trust and engagement.
A design principle that states the design of a product or interface should primarily serve its intended purpose or functionality. Important for creating digital designs that are both practical and user-friendly.
An event where developers, designers, and other stakeholders collaborate intensively on software projects, typically within a short timeframe. Important for fostering innovation, team collaboration, and rapid prototyping of new ideas in digital product development.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measures used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, or project in meeting objectives for performance. Essential for tracking progress, making informed decisions, and aligning efforts with strategic goals across various business functions, including product design and development.
A practice of performing testing activities in the production environment to monitor and validate the behavior and performance of software in real-world conditions. Crucial for ensuring the stability, reliability, and user satisfaction of digital products in a live environment.
A structured set of breakpoints used to create responsive designs that work seamlessly across multiple devices. Important for maintaining consistency and usability in responsive design.
Narrative descriptions of how users might interact with a product or system to achieve specific goals, used to inform design and development. Important for understanding user needs and ensuring the design supports their tasks and goals.